The Escape from Life to Truth

Reimagining Josiah Henson and His Autobiographies

Abstract

Whilst The Life of Josiah Henson (1849), the first autobiography of the formerly enslaved founder of the Dawn Settlement in Canada, declares that it was recorded by a white amanuensis, the second, Truth Stranger than Fiction (1858), lists no author except Henson. Despite Truth’s lack of a proclaimed amanuensis, the authorship of the text has become contested ground, with the critical consensus appearing to be that Truth, like Life, was written by a white amanuensis. As an intervention in this debate, this article performs a comparative literary analysis on Life and Truth to consider what the differences between them can teach us about the authorship of Truth